The Harper's Quine (11 page)

‘Why would you kill her, father?’ she said, turning to
look at him. He looked at her quizzically and shrugged,
declining to join in. ‘In fact you were at Compline in the
Greyfriars’ church with Catherine and me and half the
household, so we may all stand surety for one another.
And you, Maister Cunningham?’

‘Oh, I went out for a breath of air during Compline, and
she took me for a priest and wished to make confession, at
which I grew angry and knifed her,’ Gil said, and pulled a
face. ‘It isn’t funny.’

‘Would it anger you, if one took you for a priest?’

‘Yes,’ he said simply.

‘But I thought one must be a priest, to be a lawyer.’

‘It isn’t essential,’ Gil said carefully, ‘but I have no
money to live on. To get a living, I must have a benefice.
To be presented to a benefice, I must be ordained. My
uncle has been generosity itself, but he is not a young man,
and his own benefices will die with him.’

‘So you must be a priest.’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

The familiar chill struck him. When it had passed, he
said, ‘I will be ordained acolyte in July, at the Feast of the
Translation of St Mungo. I’ll take major orders, either
deacon or priest, at Ember-tide in Advent, and my uncle
has a benefice in mind for me. Then I can say Masses formy father and my brothers. It will be good,’ he said firmly,
‘not to have to rely on my uncle. He has fed, clothed and
taught me these two years and more, and never complained. At least, not about that,’ he added.

‘And then you can practise law in the Consistory Court?
Is there no other way you may practise law?’

‘Alys, you ask too many questions,’ said the mason.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said immediately. ‘I am
interested.’

‘I am not offended; said Gil. ‘Yes, there are other ways,
but I need the benefice. It always comes back to that -
I must have something to live on.’

‘Let us have some music,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘to cleanse
the thoughts and revive the spirits.’ He turned a bright eye
on his daughter. ‘Alys, will you play for us, ma mie?’

‘Perhaps Maister Cunningham would play?’ said Alys,
turning to a corner of the room. From under a pile of
papers, two more books and a table-carpet of worn silk she
extracted a long narrow box, which she set on the table.

‘Monocords!’ said Gil as she opened the lid. ‘I haven’t
seen a set of those since I came home. No, no, I am far too rusty to play, but I will sing later. Play us something
first.’

She was tapping the keys, listening to the tone of the
small sweet sounds they produced. Her father handed her
a little tuning-key from his desk and she made one or two
adjustments, then settled herself at the keyboard and
began to play the same May ballad that the harper and his
two women had performed at the Cross on May Day. Gil,
watching the movement of her slender hands on the dark
keys, heard the point at which she recollected this; the
music checked for a moment, and she bent her head further, her hair curtaining her face and hiding the delicate,
prominent nose.

‘What about something French?’ he suggested as soon as
she finished the verse. ‘Binchois? Dufay?’

‘Machaut,’ said Maistre Pierre firmly. Alys nodded, and
took up a song Gil remembered well. He joined in with the
words, and father and daughter followed, high voice and
low voice, carolling unrequited love with abandon.

‘That was good,’ said Alys as the song ended. ‘You were
adrift in the second verse, father. The third part makes a
difference.’

‘Let us sing it again,’ said the mason.

They sang it again, and followed it with others: more by
Machaut, an Italian song whose words Gil did not know,
two Flemish ballads.

‘And this one,’ said Alys. ‘It’s very new. Have you heard
it, Maister Cunningham? D’amour je suis desheritee …’

I am dispossessed by love, and do not know who to appeal to.
Alas, I have lost my love, I am alone, he has left me …

‘The setting is beautiful,’ said Gil. Alys smiled quickly at
him, and went on singing.

… to run after an affected woman who slanders me without
ceasing. Alas, I am forgotten, wherefore I am delivered to
death.

‘Always death!’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘At least let us be
cheerful about it.’ He raised his wine-cup in one large hand. ‘What do they sing in the ale-houses here? Drink up,
drink up, you’re deid a long time.’

‘You’re deid a long time, without ale or wine.’ Gil joined in
the round. Alys picked up the third entrance effortlessly,
and they sang it several times round until the mason
brought it to a close and drained his cup.

‘I think we finish there. Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we must
bury Bess Stewart, poor soul, and find out the girl Davie
was really with. We must search the kirkyard again,
though by now I have little hope of finding the weapon. If
it was there, it has been found by some burgess and taken
home as a trophy. Half the town came to see what was
afoot this afternoon.’

‘I will set the maids to ask about the girl,’ Alys said,
closing up the little keyboard. ‘hey can enquire at the
well, and at the market. Some lass in the town must
know.’

‘I wish to question that gallowglass further,’ said Gil.
‘The only Ersche speaker I know of is the harper’s sister,
and I hesitate to ask her to interpret -‘

‘I should think she would relish the task,’ observed
Alys.

He smiled at that. ‘You may be right. And I must speak
further with Ealasaidh herself and with the harper.’

‘Meanwhile,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘the day is over.
Maister Cunningham, we go to hear Compline at
Greyfriars. Will you come with us?’

The Franciscans’ church was full of a low muttering, as
the people of the High Street said evening prayers before
one saint’s altar or another. One of the friars was completing a Mass; Alys slipped away to leave money for candles
to St Clare, and returned to stand quietly between Gil and.
her father as the brothers processed in through the nave
and into the choir.

Gil, used to St Mungo’s, found the small scale of the
Office very moving. Kentigern’s foundation was a cathedral church, able to furnish a good choir and handsome
vestments for the Opus Dei, the work of God which was praising Him seven times daily. The Franciscans were a
small community, though someone had built them a large
church, and the half-dozen voices chanting the psalms in
unison beyond the brightly painted screen seemed much
closer to his own prayers than the more elaborate settings
favoured by Maister Paniter. I will lay me down in peace and
take my rest; for it is thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell in
safety.

Beside him Alys drew a sharp breath. He looked down
at her. Light glinted on the delicate high bridge of her nose.
Her eyes were shut and her lips moved rapidly as the
friars worked their way through the second of the Compline psalms. For when thou art angry all our days are
gone…So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our
hearts with wisdom. Tears leaked from Alys’s closed eyelids,
catching the candlelight, and Gil thought with a shiver of
Bess Stewart lying in the mortuary chapel by the gatehouse, still in the clothes in which she had died, with
candles at her head and feet.

For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone, and the place
thereof shall know it no more.

The Office ended, the congregation drifted out into the
rain. Alys had composed herself, but was still subdued. Gil
found it very unsatisfactory to say a formal goodnight at
the end of the wynd and watch her go home beside her
father, followed down the darkening street by two of the
men and several maids. He stood until the household was
out of sight and then turned for home.

It had been a most extraordinary day. Almost nothing
was as it had been when he got up this morning. He was
free of his books, at least for a little while, until he had
solved the challenge, the puzzle, with which he was faced.
He had a new friend in the mason, whose company would
be worth seeking out. His mind swooped away from the
suspicion that the mason’s company was the more attractive because it promised the company of Alys as well.

Yesterday, the prospect of winning a few groats from the
songmen had been something to look forward to.

Past the firmly shut door of the University, beyond the
stone houses of the wealthier merchants, at the point called
the Bell o’ the Brae where the High Street steepened
sharply into a slope too great for a horse-drawn vehicle,
the Watch was attempting to clear an ale-house. Gil, his
thoughts interrupted by the shouting, crossed the muddy
street to go by on the other side. Several customers were
already sitting in the gutter abusing the officers of the law.
As Gil passed, two more hurtled out to sprawl in the mud,
and within the lighted doorway women’s voices were
raised in fierce complaint. One was probably the ale-wife,
husky and stentorian, but among the others Gil caught a
familiar note.

He paused to listen, then strode on hurriedly. He did not
feel equal to dealing with Ealasaidh Mclan, fighting drunk
and expelled from a tavern.

His uncle was reading by the fire in the hall when he
came in, his wire spectacles falling down his nose.

‘Ah, Gilbert,’ he said, setting down his book. ‘What
news?’

‘We have made some progress,’ Gil said cautiously. His
uncle indicated the stool opposite. Sitting down, Gil summarized the results of his day. Canon Cunningham listened carefully, tapping on his book with the spectacles,
and asking the occasional question.

‘That’s a by-ordinary lassie of the mason’s,’ he said
when the account was finished.

‘I never met a lass like her,’ Gil confessed.

The Official was silent for a while, still tapping his book.
Finally he said, switching to the Latin he used when considering matters of the law, ‘The man-at-arms. The dead
woman’s plaid and purse. Whatever girl was with the
injured boy.’

‘I agree, sir.’

‘One more thing. Did Maggie not say there was a
child?’

‘Yes indeed there is, I saw it. Born last Michaelmas, it
seems.’

‘And when did Mistress Stewart leave her husband’s
house?’

‘Before St Martin’s of the previous - Ah!’ Gil stared at his
uncle. ‘Within the twelvemonth, indeed. I think Sempill
cannot know of it.’

‘Or he does not know it is his legitimate heir.’

‘I am reluctant to tell him. What he would do to a child
he needs but knows is not his own I dare not think.’

‘Keep your own counsel, Gilbert,’ said his uncle approv-

ingly. ‘Now, what difference will the child make to the
disposal of the land? Can you tell me that, hm?’

Trust the old man to turn it into a tutorial, Gil thought.
Obediently he marshalled the facts in his head and numbered them off as he spoke.

‘Imprimis, property the deceased held in her own right,
as it might be from her father’s will, should go to the child
rather than to her kin, unless she has made a will. And
even then,’ he elaborated in response to his uncle’s eyebrow, ‘if she has left the property out of her kin, perhaps
to the harper, they could challenge it, on their own behalf
or the child’s.’

‘And moveables?’

‘Secundus, the paraphernal matter, that is her own
clothes and jewellery and such items as her spinningwheel - I hardly think she was carrying a spinning-wheel
about Scotland - these are the child’s, unless there is a will,
but anything Sempill can show he gave her in marriagegifts returns to him. And, tertius, joint property held with
her husband also returns to him, to dispose of as he sees
fit. Unless,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘it transpires that he
killed her.’

‘Unless,’ his uncle corrected, ‘it can be proven that he
killed her. In which case it reverts to the original donor,
whether his kin or hers. Very good, Gilbert.’

‘I’ve been well taught,’ Gil pointed out.

Canon Cunningham acknowledged the compliment
with a quick glance, and pursued thoughtfully, ‘And what
uncle is it that might leave John Sempill money, I wonder? Not his father’s half-brother Philip, for sure, anything he
had would go to his own son, and that’s little enough by
what I remember. And the Walkinshaws keep their property to themselves.’ He paused, lost in speculation, then
noticed Gil stifling a yawn, and raised a hand to offer his
customary blessing. ‘Get you to your bed, Gilbert. It’s ower
late.’

Gil’s narrow panelled room, just under the roof, was
stiflingly hot. Whichever prebend of Cadzow had built the
house had not lacked either pretension or money, and even
here in the attics the upper part of the window was glazed.
Gil picked his way across the room in the dim light and
flung open the wooden shutters of the lower half, reasoning that the night air was unlikely to do him any more
harm now than half an hour since. One would not sleep in
it, of course.

Returning to his narrow bed he lit the candle and sat
down, hearing the strapping creak, and lifted his commonplace book down from its place on the shelf, between his
Chaucer and a battered Aristotle. He turned the leaves
slowly. Each poem brought back vividly the circumstances
in which he had copied it. Several pieces by William
Dunbar, an unpleasant little man but a good makar, copied
from his own writing when he had been in Glasgow with
the Archbishop. Two songs by Machaut, dictated by Wat
Kerr in an inn near St Severin. Ah, here it was. The Kingis
Quair, made be the King of Scots, or so Wattie had insisted,
when Gil had transcribed it one long afternoon in a
thunderstorm from a copy owned by … owned by … was
it Dugald Campbell of Glenorchy? No matter. He skimmed
the rime-royal stanzas, his eye falling on remembered
phrases. For which sudden abate, anon astart The blood of all
my body to my heart. Yes, it was like that, the effect of the
sight of her against the light in the doorway of her father’s
house, the blood ebbing and then rushing back so that his
heart thumped uncontrollably.